Inner child Erin is best Erin. :P Though I don't see how getting pissed at the guy hanging her out of a window and a floating medusa head is classified as a freak out. Also is inner child Erin playing Mario?

Nile McMorrow:Inner child Erin is best Erin. :P Though I don't see how getting pissed at the guy hanging her out of a window and a floating medusa head is classified as a freak out. Also is inner child Erin playing Mario?

Inner Erin seems a bit more genuine, kinda like who Erin is trying to be with her somewhat fake seeming snark and almost forced rough personality, notice how little inner Erin's facial expression only changes to the schadenfreude of her physical self. Does that mean the moral of the arc is going to be more "be yourself, not a caricature of yourself." Also, wonder if Tris is a fan of Xiang Yu.

Also Nile McMorrow, all older gamer's inner children are always constantly playing the first NES Mario (Or as in Erin's case, the SNES Mario, both because they came with their respective consoles as the defining moment of when the gamer considers they became a gamer) the game the box everyone started on came with, it's iconic and meaningful in that way, and why most archetypal gamer merch is marked with mushrooms or the like.

Indeed, looks like it's a depiction of the start of (I think) the first level of Forest of Illusion (The yellow dots made me think of the caterpillar things right away), probably one of my favorite levels as a kid even if I found the rest of the levels annoying xD

Holy shit I just realised I was actually reading that in her voice after the first few panels. It fits so well, I just went back and read the whole thing again.Anyway, great comic. I haven't really had an issue with the arc lately, but this is still one of my favourite strips in quite a while.

Man, that would be so much better then this. (No offense, Mr. Carter. Toph is much better then a LOT of things.)

Anyway, while I'm glad we're finally getting somewhere in this arc, I'm kinda wondering why Erin had be hanging upside down for almost a month before we got here. Still, I'm actually looking forward to the next strip now. Faith in arc restored, I guess.

This makes me wonder if your inner-self would know words that you yourself do not. Maybe some sort of subconscious understanding of concept that can't be cognitively explained, so comes out as words you've been exposed to, but never consciously learned. Curious concept.

Oh, and I've been reading this comic since it started, always enjoyed it, but never said anything up to this point. It's a great read, and one of the many things I actively look forward to reading when I visit the site. I'm personally hoping for a return to the more light-hearted lampooning of video game idiosyncrasies, but I've never been opposed to insightful and interesting character building.

Oh, dear lord, I was just about to post this. So I'm NOT crazy. Maybe it's the fact that she's not changing the direction she's looking throughout the whole page (because of the game, clearly), but Toph was the first thing to pop into my head.

Judging from a couple other comments, the parallel is more striking than I thought.